Mulvane dad tried to save daughters from fire

MULVANE — Kristian Slaybaugh said he'd barely dozed off for a nap after lunch Monday when he smelled smoke.

"It all happened so quick," Slaybaugh said of the fire that tore through his home, possibly from a faulty furnace, and killed his two young daughters.

Kristina Slaybaugh, Kristian's wife, bolted out of the house to call 911. He went looking for their two preschool daughters in their bedroom.

Kristian Slaybaugh said they'd talked about what they would do in case of a fire. But nothing went as planned.

The Mulvane Fire Department received the call at about 12:40 p.m., but it took most of the afternoon to battle the fire and find the girls' remains in their bedroom.

"The ceiling had collapsed on them, which is why we couldn't find them for so long," Fire Chief David Williams said.

Ashlynn, who had celebrated her fourth birthday Saturday, and her sister Alessandra, 3, perished in the blaze. Another child, 8-year-old Austin, was at school.

Kristian Slaybaugh said he grabbed two fire extinguishers the family kept in the kitchen. He said he wanted to use them to clear a path to the girls' bedroom.

The first extinguisher jammed. He tried the second one.

"That one wouldn't work either," he said Monday night, standing in front of the home's charred remains.

With thick smoke and flames blocking him, he said, he would have been engulfed by the fire if he had gone any farther.

He saw no choice but to turn toward the front door.

"I thought my back was on fire," he said. "That's how hot it was."

He said he ran outside and tried to break the window of the girls' bedroom with a tree branch. But he couldn't because the heat repelled him.

Christy Blochlinger said she and her husband, Gene, were also asleep next door.

"We woke up to the fire," Blochlinger said. "My husband ran out to help, but there was just nothing you could do."

Williams said fire investigations take time to pinpoint the exact cause. But preliminary findings on Monday pointed to the furnace.

Kristian Slaybaugh, a building subcontractor who installs windows and doors, said the family had lived at the house for two years.

This story was originally published February 9, 2010 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Mulvane dad tried to save daughters from fire."